


Frequencies

by kalijean, SLWalker



Series: The due South Zombie Radioplay [1]
Category: Midnight Blue - Fandom, due South
Genre: Gen, Midnight Blue/Arch to the Sky AU, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalijean/pseuds/kalijean, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snapshots, before and during the end of the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Vogue

"You will be fine. But don't go near anyone not covering their mouths when they cough. Getting sick on your first day of work..." Ma trailed off, then frowned and reached out to tug the bottom of Frannie's little blazer. "So short. You should go and borrow some of your sister's clothes."

"Ma, it's fine. This is what modern business women are wearing! I saw it in Vogue!" Frannie caught her mother's hands, giving them a squeeze before stepping back, getting out of reach of any more fussing. "If you had your way, I'd go out dressed like _Ray_."

"Your brother is a handsome dresser," Ma said, but her eyes were twinkling. She clucked her tongue once more at Frannie's little suit, then sighed and shrugged her shoulders. "You should go, before you're late."

Frannie picked up her sequined purse and turned towards the door before adjusting her bustline. Okay, sure, it was just a secretary job, but now was the perfect time to strike since everyone in the city seemed to be coming down with the flu at the same time. They'd be able to actually see her _talent_ , without all those college-educated girls around to wave around their fancy degrees and steal away the respect. What did those girls have on her, anyway? She was _amazing_ on the phone, and she could type. She was friendly. Sassy. And she sure wasn't bad on the eyes, either.

Her mother came over and put a kiss on her cheek, careful so as not to smudge her makeup. "Be careful. Be home for dinner."

"Be careful? It's a job interview, Ma, not a flight into space or somethin'. What could go wrong?" Frannie asked, grinning and waving her purse around, as she walked out the door and into her future.


	2. Flu

"We seriously have to have a briefing on the fucking _flu_?"

Fitz was driving, looking about as happy about having to schlep back to the precinct as Dewey was.

"God, the brass is going to Hell these days." Dewey was running his mouth. It was something to do. "Nothing but pencil-necked red-tape raining down on us. We should do something."

"Like what? Whine about it? Fat lot of good it's doing you, Tom."

"Shut up. I dunno. Protest. Blue Flu or something."

"Protest _what_? What am I chanting here, Dewey? 'Down with a vaguely crappy feeling Dewey gets when he thinks about having to show up for a meeting!'"

Rolling his eyes, Dewey sighed. "Can't you indulge me for two minutes, Fitz? What's with you today? You look like somebody sprayed you with a coat of primer."

"Dunno. I don't feel so good."

"Great. You, too. Nice, Fitz. Really nice of you to close a guy up in a car with your germs without a heads up. All the good Blue Flu's gonna get us when we're all actually sick."

Fitz pulled in, doing his usual half-assed parking job. He swung open the door.

"Eh, you need to get sick every once in a while. Keeps your immune system strong."

"Next time, do me a favor and let me be a weakling."

"All right, but mark my words. Someday that's gonna get ya."


	3. Taken

"Hey!"

Willie Lambert ran. He wasn't supposed to go out. Ma wouldn't tell him why, but he didn't care, not right now. He ran and he ran, faster than any time he ever stole a purse.

"Hey! Get off her! I've got a gun!"

What he actually had was a rock. But that man had taken his sister right off the corner, and even on two seconds' notice, Willie wasn't about to bring a rock to a gun fight and _advertise_ it.

" _Hey!_ "

He'd rounded the corner, nearly landing smack into the side of a dumpster, when his sister screamed again. This one was different. The sound tore through the air and right through to his soul.

The man was _biting_ her.

Willie didn't choke off the terrified sob when he gripped his rock tightly and sailed it at the man's head.


	4. Heebies

_Finally_.

Benton was a hard man to find, even with a little help from the hereafter. Little wonder; perhaps the beyond had been trying not to look him entirely in the eye, given the mess that had been made of this world. Something should be done. Bob would've written a letter, if he knew where to send it.

It figured. Dead in the middle of his murder investigation.

At least he had a fair idea of where he was. Chicago, of all places. Someone must've had a good laugh at sending Benton _there_. The alley was filthy, with or without the traces of the undead, but the subtle streaks of blood gave even a dead man a case of the heebies.

And sure enough, Bob Fraser damn near jumped out of his cutoff stetson when something hip-checked the back door open, stumbling through it to dump a bunch of empty boxes on the ground.

That something was blond, followed by something bright, followed by Benton.

"I never knew a head could explode like that," said Blondie, thankfully oblivious of Bob's impression of a hosed-down housecat.

"My apologies," replied Benton, sounding battered, regretful...

...and equally as oblivious.

Damn.


	5. Fetish

"What the fuck is this shit?!"

Longfellow managed to go through the evening without any conception that the world was ending. Mostly because he'd passed out with one boot missing in the stands of the Evergreen, snuggling with his fucking _broom_ because Guy stole away the girl he was sure he was gonna get to pound through a mattress. So, waking up to find some sick looking asshole trying to eat his big toe through his remaining boot was seriously screwed up.

"Get offa me," he muttered, and kicked the asshole in the face with his socked foot.

The guy made a sick noise, and then lunged. The ghosts of barfights past returned to Longfellow and he smashed the asshole in the face with his broom, sending him making thumping, grinding noises down the stands.

Longfellow staggered up and grabbed his other boot from where it was, ten feet away, and then headed for the door. Gas station should have some fucking coffee. It was too early for this shit, some stupid foot-fetish sicko coming onto him without even buying him a beer.

He made it down the stairs and didn't even notice that sicko was actually _getting up_ from taking that spill. Not until the sicko came after him again.

Longfellow came around with his elbow and felt teeth shatter. A few tore into his arm, but shit, he didn't care. It made the sicko go down again, and then he was headed for the exit, headed out to get some coffee and maybe to see if he could nail some sloppy seconds from Guy.

It was only when he opened the door on the night that he realized something was way more fucked up than some foot-fetish asshole trying to get it on with him.

 _"Fuuuuuuuuck."_


	6. Last Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cindy Chase makes a choice.

She was almost to the doors when it happened.

The patient -- no longer a patient -- had been in one of the rooms that was marked locked. But it wasn't locked. Cindy darted by, but not fast enough.

Now, she stood in a darkened room with her hand clutched over her arm, staring out the window.

He would come. She knew he would; knew he would fight through anything to get there. Even in the middle of Nipawin falling apart. Even in the middle of the world ending. She knew Mike would come. Because that was Mike. Because he would never let her down while he had breath left in him. Because he would come out into this nightmare, away from duty, away from his detachment, away from everything if he thought he could get her out and save her.

He would come, and she wouldn't be there to meet him. Because she knew what was happening. She knew what was going to happen to her.

She had tried to call again, to try to get through to him, but it wouldn't have worked. The phone lines had gone down, and he would have already been on his way, fighting blocked roads and panicking crowds and walking sickness and impossibility, while the town of almost five thousand fell into ever more terrifying chaos.

She had managed to lock the front doors of the hospital. Lock them all _in_ , the ones who hadn't already gotten away.

It was the second to last thing she knew she would ever do.

There he was.

She saw 414's headlights come down the road and took her blood-covered hand away to press to the glass, the gold of her wedding band stained red. He had his spotlight on, and she wanted to scream for him to _run_ , God, Mike, _run_ , because he was going to get mobbed once they saw or heard him. But even if he could hear her, it wouldn't stop him. He'd get out of that cruiser, his only shield, and try to get her out without knowing that she'd locked herself in. She couldn't see him, in the dark. But she knew he was peering into the night, intent and holding back fear and desperation to keep his head when he needed it, and looking for her.

One came out of the dark and smacked off of 414, and Cindy drew in a sharp breath, slapping her bloody hand over her mouth. She could hear his .38 through the window and across the parking lot. More would follow that sound. She watched as his cruiser kept going, for the Pineview, where she said she would meet him. Where she was going to get to, if she could have gotten to it.

Out of view, away, to look futilely for the wife who wouldn't be there.

That was the last thing she knew she would ever do: Protect her husband from the infection now working its way through her.

She pressed her hand to the glass again, tears spilling silently down her cheeks.


	7. Goodbye

His Drew was sick.

It was the most child-like inner voice that spoke within Guy to find him in the melee, bloodied and limping like the dozens of common barfights it could have been. But bitten. Pale. Ill.

Oh. Oh, Andrew.

He twitched. Sucked in desperate breaths through his teeth. Shivered. Guy held him by the hair, forehead to forehead, apathetic to how long they had been standing in the open. The rest of the God-forsaken world was lost to them both, falling down around them.

Somewhere in the muffled silence of their own world; somewhere through the tremble of his body and the intermittent clench of his teeth, Drew started to laugh.

Guy pressed his hand into straw-coloured hair. Wild, filthy, and now bloody. When he pressed Drew into his own neck, he knew it could mean his throat torn out. It no longer mattered. Laughter muffled against him; fingernails dug into his clothes. Drew smelled of sweat and blood and pain and fear. It might've been just like the rest of the world, if it were not a piece of himself dying.

Laughter tapered away. Drew trembled in his arms, teeth chattering.

A tiny sob gave way from silent tears. Guy pulled back, delicately wiping them away with dirty, shaking hands. Little tracks of salt clean amongst the dinge, smeared at his touch.

He took Drew by the hair a final time, turning his head, and pressed a kiss hard into his temple.

" _Au revoir_." It came through tears, through tearing himself away, and through his heart shattered upon the ground.

Drew shut his eyes. Guy closed his own. Blindly, he pulled Drew's revolver from his own pocket.

The shot echoed.

His Drew was gone.


	8. Goldfish

The last time Mike Chase had made that noise, he was nine and the goldfish he had won at a festival two months prior was being flushed down the toilet. He loved it and it died when it got too cold; it actually took him awhile to deal with the fact that he'd accidentally killed it by leaving his bedroom window open, and when no one was looking, he'd cry about it, because he'd thought that his goldfish was cold and scared and that it maybe felt like it died because he'd stopped caring, instead of personal stupidity, and it hurt. To imagine dying like that.

Even when he was older, Mike never got another pet. Understood the natural order, knew death was part of it -- he hunted, fished, for years -- but never got another pet.

The whole world had fallen apart; death was everywhere, and periods of determined professional calm were interspersed with moments of high-strung terror. They figured out too late that the sick were the enemy. Figured it out fast. Still too late.

Turnbull had gone radio silent. Mitch and Sandy were trying to get survivors out.

Dawn cast a vicious red glow on his little town, and his wife wasn't where they were going to meet, and now what was left of Russ was laying beside 418. The family he'd been trying to protect was reduced to bits of torn clothes and blood stains, and Russ had died cold and alone and scared, crying for backup that coulda never gotten there in time.

Mike stood still and looked for far too long, before the sound of running footfalls made him look away, just in time to see a pack of them coming from the spaces between businesses, malevolent shadows in the dawn.

 


	9. Gray Skies

_"...enlevez la tête ou détruisez le cerveau. Ne permettez pas aux individus affectés de vous mordre. N'essayez pas d'entrer dans les villes…"_

Someone had left the radio on.

The building was barricaded, a last-ditch effort to combat the thick blanket of infected in the streets around the building and pressing in at all the doors and windows. Some had gotten in. Nobody could say how many, but they occupied the lower floors, milling. Moaning. Heaving against the barricade made of desks and prayer.

From a window on a high floor, Sergeant Thatcher watched the world below as it died. In violence. In terror. In chaos.

Under gray skies, it seemed so very small in death.

Somewhere in the floors below, the dead ravened and moaned.

Meg Thatcher rested a hand upon her duty weapon and turned up the radio.

 _"...this message will now be repeated in English."_


End file.
